A working Parliament

Martin Henry, Gleaner Writer

Now here is something that the departed John Maxwell and I could actually agree on. Almost exactly a year before his death, John wrote on Sunday, December 13, 2009 one of those classic Maxwellian bashers. This one he called 'Jamaica the Blasted Isle'. Nearly the full cast of the prime subjects of his regular bashing appeared in that single column: Edward Seaga - taking the lead of course, big business, capitalism, The Gleaner, the Urban Development Corporation, those damaging the environment, the wimpy media contrasted with the lion-hearted John, commentators who are not real journalists, among whom I would be numbered, and the United States and its sold-out media.

But in the midst of the piece, Maxwell wrote: "We need more representatives of the people, not fewer ... . In my view," he said, "If we want a working Parliament capable of representing the people, we need about 120 MPs to enable a working Cabinet, two capable front benches and enough people for working committees. Unlike the majority of fellow Jamaicans, I agree with John. Although I could live with around 85 MPs at a ratio of about 1 MP to about 20,000 voting-age citizens.

We also need a well-appointed Parliament building in a prime location in the capital city, with fine architectural aesthetics, surrounded by gardens. We need parliamentary aides equipped with the resources to support the work of parliamen-tarians. Ministers can rely on their ministry staff for a lot of support in getting their legislative work done. Regular parliamentarians have virtually no support, and opposition members, without access to the back-stop support which the executive can provide, are particularly badly off. If they have assistance at all in getting their legislative work done, it is from their political party, an altogether unhealthy state of affairs.

Suitable home

Gordon House has done its time as a suitable home for the nation's Parliament, as did Headquarters House before it. National Heroes Park, as well as the extensive King's House lands, offers attractive alternative locations for Parliament facilities that the nation can be proud of. We see and admire impressive facilities for their legislatures in the great democracies of the world.

The view is widespread here that politicians deserve nothing more or better, whether by way of salaries or facilities. The reasonable costs for running a robust democracy must be met. Only a tiny fraction of the national budget is allocated to the direct costs of Parliament, including salaries which are paltry compared to the real responsi-bilities and to what prevails in the private sector.

Apart from the view that politicians are inherently corrupt, the view that Parliament does very little to deserve more is a driving factor. And there is some point to this. In an earlier column I noted that "we have a lazy Parliament".

Lazy and laid-back

Professor of government at the University of the West Indies, Trevor Munroe, has helped us to see just how lazy and laid-back our legislature is. Related to his quest for anti-corruption legislation as head of the National Integrity Action Forum, he has assembled comparative data on the number of annual sittings of legislatures in selected Commonwealth countries. Jamaica is at the bottom of the list.

Jamaica's House of Representatives has only managed to sit on average 49 times a year in the five-year period 2004-2005 to 2008-2009, passing an average of 26 acts each year. The election year 2007-2008 had only 36 sittings as MPs abandoned Parliament for the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, there is a seriously backed-up legislative agenda.

On the agenda is the current prime minister's move to impose two-term limits upon the office of prime minister, ostensibly to reduce the likelihood of corruption in government. The complications involved in the formula, and the overlap of party leadership with government leadership, are likely to render impractical the proposition which is almost without precedent in the Commonwealth Westminster system. Nor have term limits done much to stem corruption in corrupt states.

The Maxwell formula of expanding the legislature, especially if accompanied by a curbing of the power of the political parties over government in executive and legislature, is likely to yield better results for improved governance. Jamaican voters know how to impose term limits upon an unpopular government and its prime minister. What we need is the maintenance of a free and fair electoral system to continue to do so. Leader of the Opposition, Portia Simpson, is quite right: Bruce Golding should switch to getting his party to impose term limits upon its leader, not on the office of prime minister.

The institution which has done most to upgrade and maintain the prospects of free and fair elections in our politically tribalised environment is what is now the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ). There have been some interesting - and disturbing - recent developments between the ECJ and the Parliament.

A fundamental reason for the incremental successes of the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC), now turned Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ), since its establishment in 1979 has been the convention of the Parliament accepting its 'advice' without debate. The two leaders who have together contributed most to the tribalisation of politics in independent Jamaica, Edward Seaga [leader of the JLP, 1974-2005] and Michael Manley [leader of the PNP, 1969-1992], boldly led their parties in this new direction. The EAC was constituted of a careful and delicate balancing of appointees from the two parties and mutually agreed independents.

A handful of parliamentarians, drawn from both sides of the House of Representatives, have arisen to buck the convention and to challenge some of the recommendations of the ECJ to Parliament in its Continuing Legal Reform report. And that challenge has raised some old and fundamental issues about the role, responsibilities and powers of Parliament.

So grave was the matter in the view of the prime minister and leader of the JLP that he told Parliament, "The implications for something that has been important to the country over three decades are so huge that I think that this is a matter that requires consultation, and I am going to propose that the debate be suspended to allow for discussion between the Government and Opposition ... . I think the implications are so significant that it warrants that sort of treatment before we return to the debate."

The leader of the Opposition and the rest of the Parliament, by overwhelming majority, accepted the prime minister's recommendation, that debate on the Continuing Legal Reform report of the ECJ be suspended until the Government and Opposition had a consultation about its contents.

It is the prime minister's action, with the ready collusion of the leader of the Opposition, which is deeply troubling to defenders of parliamentary democracy, not the legitimate dissenting actions of Everald Warmington [Government] and Robert Pickersgill [Opposition].

Removal of the matter

In the first instance, the Government and the Opposition were already in the right place, the Parliament, for "consulting" on a report to the Parliament by a servant and subordinate of the Parliament which can only advise and recommend. What, in fact, has happened is the removal of the matter from the house of the people's representatives, from the public spotlight and the public record, to becoming a matter of private 'consultation', not really between Government and Opposition but between the non-constitutional political parties which form Government and Opposition.

Conventions are just that, conventions, not law, which only the legislature can make and change. The convention of Parliament accepting the advice of the EAC has served this country extraordinarily well at a particular and delicate moment in our political history, which was heading in the wrong direction as far as free and fair elections are concerned. This convention must not be treated lightly. But the day had to come when it would be challenged. And that day is here, which, very fortuitously, has come at a point of maturity in the electoral system.

Nor should the role, responsibility and prerogative of the Parliament be treated lightly. Warmington and Pickersgill, despite the discomfort caused, are carrying out their duties as legislators. Their leaders have abdicated theirs in colluding to circumvent the Parliament.

By its very successes over the 32 years that the convention has held, including the legislated power of the constituted authority to void election results in constituencies where there is evidence of unfair voting, the EAC/ECJ has substantially downgraded the danger of the corrupt manipulation of the electoral process by any political party in Jamaica to its own advantage. The commission should be warmly congratulated and thanked for its sterling contribution to the strengthening of parliamentary democracy in Jamaica, but should be firmly reminded, that it is a statutory creature and servant of the Parliament, the legislative body of the land made up of the people's elected representatives in the House of Representatives. Warmington's view, that the ECJ is overstepping its authority in certain of its recommendations, such as the one for shifting the responsibility to give advice to the governor general to postpone a general election from the Cabinet to the Constituted Authority, is not without merit. And it is precisely the basis for a robust parliamentary debate. The chairman of the commission himself, Prof Errol Miller, has pointed out in a letter to the editor that in several countries the electoral commission is a branch of the judiciary. Nuff said. The judiciary interprets and applies the law, not makes it, which would be the de facto position for the ECJ if none of its recommendations to the Parliament could ever be challenged, in perpetuity.

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